Parenting our Bee after infertility

Julie and Julia

Yeah, so my sneaking suspicion that G’s lack of interest in actually swallowing any food is starting to impact her weight was true – she weighed in today at only 6.7kg, which is almost a half kilo less than she should have been if she’s stayed on track.

I admit I am getting really frustrated, because all the pieces are there – but it’s just not working for some reason regardless of whether I feed her finger food or offer her food on a spoon.

My Maternal Health Nurse (bless her) is not worried – I think if she had been she would have booked me in for a repeat visit in a few weeks time to measure progress, which she hasn’t.

Instead, she reckons she’s seen a lot of babies like this in her 20 years, and while I hate to be in this situation at least I feel she’s on my side with both the baby-led weaning and in giving me a few extra ideas as to how to get over this hurdle. She also thinks G’s doing brilliantly at everything else (why oh why can’t I focus on this, rather than the food thing? Typical Virgo).

Firstly, it seems that waiting an hour after milk feeds before solids is not long enough, since she’s still full and finds it more fun to chuck food over the edge of the high chair than actually eat it. So I’m now going to leave a 3 or so hour gap before solids, and remove 1 day feed to get her level of hunger up (at the moment she’s still getting 6 feeds a day which is quite a lot). In practice this will simply be offering solids when she wakes up from naps instead of milk first, and then topping up with milk after.

We’re also going to cook the French way – channelling a little Julia Child! Butter, cream and full fat milk and yoghurt have made there way into my house for the first time in a while, and I will have to try double hard not to snack on what she doesn’t eat if I want to keep fitting into my jeans!

The MHN also thinks the waking in the night for feeds is linked to this – so active and easily distracted in the day when I’m trying to feed her, that she needs quiet night feeds to catch up.